Ex-CEO of Abercrombie & Fitch was recorded on prison tape saying doctors ‘better find me incompetent’

• Lawyers for Michael Jeffries said he was incompetent ahead of his October sex trafficking trial.

• The former Abercrombie & Fitch chief executive was seriously harmed, a defense expert said during a hearing on Tuesday.

• She also pointed to a jail tape in which Jeffries said doctors “better find me incompetent.”

Last year, former Abercrombie & Fitch CEO Michael Jeffries said in a prison tape that doctors “had better find me incompetent,” a defense psychologist testified Tuesday.

Jeffries testified in federal court in Central Islip, New York, as he prepared to begin a three-day mental competency hearing.

Jeffries, 81, is fighting sex trafficking charges that he used his wealth and power to abuse dozens of aspiring male models while running the international retail giant.

His lawyers hope to prove he is mentally incapacitated and cannot stand trial with two co-defendants – long-term lover Matthew Smith and a third man they hired. Jury selection is scheduled to begin on October 26.

Federal prosecutors insist Jeffries is competent. They said that conclusion was supported by their own doctors and more than 100 phone calls between Jeffries and Smith.

The calls were recorded last year while the former CEO was incarcerated for four months in the mental health unit of a federal prison in North Carolina.

Defense attorney Brian H. Bieber brought up a potentially damaging tape at Tuesday’s hearing. He asked his first defense expert if there was a tape showing Jeffries “hoping for a good outcome”?

Witness Jacqueline C. Valdes, a clinical neuropsychologist, said yes, citing a taped conversation in which Jeffries said, “You better find me incompetent,” referring to his prison mental health examiner.

“He was just saying things without a filter,” Valdez explained to U.S. District Court Judge Nusrat Choudhury. “This is just another example of the unfettered conduct that I talked about before,” Valdez told the judge.

Valdez said other examples include Jeffries using “words like bitch” when speaking to prison mental health workers. “He was described a number of times as being a little too personal,” she told the judge.

She added, “This happened to me” during an examination of Jeffries earlier this year. “In his interactions with me, he was sometimes humorous and sometimes too personal.”

Defense attorneys argued that Jeffries has suffered from severe cognitive impairment for a decade due to Alzheimer’s disease and Lewy body dementia, a progressive neurodegenerative disease.

The defense argued that Jeffries’ erratic behavior was a symptom of his illness and could lead him to “blurt out” self-incriminating statements in front of a judge or prospective jurors.

On Tuesday, Valdes said Jeffries’ inappropriate behavior was part of a constellation of dementia symptoms that were made worse by the lingering effects of a fall while traveling in South Africa in 2018, four years after his retirement.

Even before she was charged in October 2024, Jeffries was prone to hallucinations, fugues, delusional thoughts and “living out her dreams,” symptoms that she said were alleviated to some extent by medication.

Valdez said Smith told her in a 2023 interview that Jeffries “was found in a neighbor’s yard, sitting on the ground in his underwear, unable to move.”

Jeffries, now free on $10 million bail, sat quietly at the defense table during Tuesday’s testimony, his mouth set in a frown. He turned to look at the speaker, his hands clasped in front of him, or fiddling with his pen.

Valdez told the judge that talking to others was Jeffries’ strong suit, again citing jail recordings.

“He could hold a conversation,” she testified. “Language ability is actually his strongest ability.”

But she said scans showed evidence of brain atrophy and other hallmarks of dementia, and that his memory and comprehension tests showed extremely low results.

She said last year, when asked to name as many fruits and vegetables as possible, he appeared confused and said his answers were “in the bottom 3 per cent for his age”. For his age, she said, he was in the bottom 1 percent of memory for 16 words.

Federal prosecutors countered that Jeffries was released in December after four months of examinations and treatment in Butner, and that their own doctors found that Jeffries was able to understand his charges and assist in his defense, a standard of competency for trial.

They plan to call three of their own psychologists to testify at the hearing and to play portions of last year’s jailhouse tapes in court.

Jeffries, Smith and employee James T. Jacobson have all pleaded not guilty to sex trafficking and interstate prostitution charges. If convicted, they face mandatory minimum sentences of 15 years and up to life in prison.

Read the original article on Business Insider